RPF0597-Debt-Freedom_Leads_to_Career_Freedom_to_Become_a_Financial_Adviser-Interview_with_Matt_Miner_from_Design_Independence
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00:00:30.760 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,
00:00:37.600 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:00:40.640 | My name is Joshua, and I hope you really enjoy today's show, because we're going to cover two important themes.
00:00:45.900 | Theme number one is I'm going to share with you the ongoing story of a listener and a returning guest of Radical Personal Finance,
00:00:54.720 | and how this particular man has put in place his own approach towards financial freedom.
00:01:00.620 | This story is important because it shows how financial independence and financial freedom can be achieved in stages.
00:01:07.400 | Stages that involve getting out of debt, stages that involve building up assets so that you can transition your life,
00:01:14.500 | and stages that allow you to transition to a career choice that is much better suited to you.
00:01:19.840 | And that's what this particular listener has done.
00:01:22.480 | Thing number two is we're going to talk about being a financial advisor.
00:01:25.220 | One of the continual themes that I have learned is of interest to my listeners is how to become a financial advisor.
00:01:33.160 | And this is normal. I went down this road being a personal finance aficionado, and then finally realizing, "Hey, wait a second. I can do this and make a living at it."
00:01:41.200 | And there are a lot of people who are seeking to do that, and this particular listener has done that.
00:01:46.960 | And so with that, Matt, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:01:50.500 | Matt, is it fair to call your story a financial independence story?
00:01:54.640 | Yeah, I think so. I think it's probably fair to call it a journey toward financial independence story.
00:02:00.780 | So Matt is a returning guest here on Radical Personal Finance.
00:02:04.280 | You were first on the show in episode 377, which was back in September of 2016.
00:02:12.020 | That episode was titled, "Should You Go to Graduate School as a Simple Way of Increasing Your Income?"
00:02:17.300 | Interview with Matt Minor from designindependence.com.
00:02:21.540 | Now, Matt, since then, at that time when we spoke, you were working in a fairly corporate job, a fairly time-intensive job.
00:02:31.180 | But fast forward until today, and you've made some big decisions.
00:02:35.820 | Tell us about what's happened over the last couple of years.
00:02:38.980 | Yeah, and so it's just been a really big change in our family's life.
00:02:45.520 | And I was thinking about our interview back from the fall of 2016, and your words were rolling around in my head.
00:02:53.660 | And I know at different times on this show, Joshua, you have read some extended quotes.
00:02:58.040 | So I'm going to open with this one here because it just stuck with me.
00:03:02.380 | In that episode, you said you were interviewing me kind of about how I would evaluate the decision pursuing FI versus balancing out with family interests.
00:03:12.620 | And I said, "We're more constrained by time than money at this point in our life."
00:03:17.000 | I said, "I prefer to solve my problems about my time more than my money problems."
00:03:21.100 | And I often tell anyone who will listen, although I haven't gone so far as to share it with my boss, that if I could work two-thirds of the time for half the money, I would gladly make that exchange.
00:03:28.800 | And here we are a couple years later, and honestly, we've gone on to do something a little bit like that.
00:03:33.840 | And the reason that we were able to do that is because of the groundwork that we laid from 2010 to 2018 to pursue a transition where we could, in many ways, make a big shift in how I'm paid, but also kind of lay the groundwork for the future.
00:03:51.180 | And more along the lines of stuff that you've reflected on elsewhere, sort of what would you do if you could never retire?
00:03:57.180 | And I feel really blessed maybe to have landed in a position where that's exactly how I feel about my work at this time.
00:04:04.440 | So, remind us where you were in 2016, what you were doing, and then walk us through the journey to today of where you are and what you're doing.
00:04:14.440 | Yeah. Well, in 2016, we were about six years into, I guess, being hardcore personal finance hobbyists.
00:04:21.440 | And that had come up as we had studied Dave Ramsey, paid off near about a quarter million dollars of debt that I had accumulated through going to business school at Duke University, and had done that through a pretty standard post-business school career that I really enjoyed.
00:04:38.440 | At that time, I was managing sales for a large dealership organization.
00:04:42.940 | I had 15 direct reports and 50 indirects.
00:04:45.940 | And it was just a busy job, as you can imagine.
00:04:48.700 | Some days, I had as many as 100 incoming phone calls from my staff.
00:04:52.940 | And fast forward to April of this year, and the transition that we made was to join a fee-only independent financial planning firm here in Raleigh, which I guess was just a chance to kind of continue to riff on my personal finance interests.
00:05:10.200 | And what's kind of been terrific about this opportunity is just how much I enjoy the folks that I work with and how well aligned we are from kind of a money philosophy standpoint.
00:05:22.200 | We try to lead a lot in terms of helping our clients think about the journey from where they are to where they want to be.
00:05:30.200 | And generosity is a huge value for our firm and for many of our clients.
00:05:34.200 | And so those are just kind of front and center in my life and made this fit with PLC Wealth super enjoyable for me.
00:05:42.200 | So I want to talk with you a good bit about the move into financial planning because a very significant percentage of my listeners are interested in the world of finance.
00:05:52.200 | That was my own journey.
00:05:53.200 | I was interested in personal finance, and I became a professional financial advisor.
00:05:57.200 | And I know a lot of people have that interest.
00:06:00.200 | But I'm more interested to begin with in your thoughts on financial independence.
00:06:06.200 | So here's what I understand.
00:06:07.200 | And you correct me on this.
00:06:09.200 | You began your focus on personal finance about six years ago.
00:06:14.200 | And some of the initial input into your life that opened your eyes was Dave Ramsey's program.
00:06:20.200 | Is that accurate?
00:06:21.200 | Yeah.
00:06:22.200 | Prior to that time, were you did you just not pay attention to money?
00:06:28.200 | What was your relationship with the finances of your life?
00:06:31.200 | Yeah.
00:06:32.200 | So prior to that time, and I guess if you wanted to kind of break it into.
00:06:35.200 | So I'm 39 years old.
00:06:37.200 | My adult life, if you want to figure that it sort of starts sometime around 2000, I was still an undergrad at that time, but I was earning a decent amount of money.
00:06:44.200 | Prior to kind of about 2010, I had always just figured I would grow my income and not worry that much about how much we spent.
00:06:54.200 | And the result of that was an increasing lifestyle, modest or small investment assets and increasing debt.
00:07:02.200 | And the real big chunk of that was going back to business school from 2007 to 2009 on a full time basis.
00:07:10.200 | I went with two children when I started school, emerged with three children at the end of school.
00:07:16.200 | And, you know, so we just came out with this kind of a big mess.
00:07:22.200 | And some cousins who are just great friends gave us a copy of the Total Money Makeover book in August of 2010.
00:07:29.200 | Kind of worked through that program, got super intense about the debt, sold stuff, had garage sales, went to Disneyland to celebrate when we finished paying stuff off in 2014.
00:07:40.200 | So that took about three years.
00:07:41.200 | And then by that time, I had met Jacob Blood Fisker and Mr. Money Mustache and Mr. and Mrs. 1500 Days and yourself.
00:07:50.200 | And just, I guess, really the motivation in continuing to push forward with the personal finance stuff was thinking, "Man, I would like as many people to know about how powerful dealing with your money early is and how freeing it is to not owe anybody anything and to set your lifestyle much lower than your income because it just frees you up for so many different things."
00:08:18.200 | So your experience is probably fairly typical, at least among my listening audience, and is typical of my own experience.
00:08:28.200 | When you were heading towards college, you're primarily thinking about your career.
00:08:33.200 | And you're thinking about that from the perspective of the type of work you're interested in and also the amount of money that you want to make.
00:08:39.200 | And I certainly also had that same mentality, the idea that if I can just make a lot of money, then everything will be good.
00:08:45.200 | Most of us feel that way.
00:08:48.200 | If we just make enough money, everything will work out.
00:08:50.200 | And so you're sitting down and doing an analysis on what degree to get.
00:08:54.200 | And you say, "I'll get a business degree because at least then I can make a lot of money."
00:08:57.200 | And if you're thinking about borrowing money, taking money out on student loans, you think, "Well, that's no big deal because I'll be able to repay it."
00:09:03.200 | And what's fairly normal is you start to accumulate the normal amount of debt.
00:09:09.200 | Whether or not you've been frivolous, whether or not you've wasted money is relatively immaterial.
00:09:14.200 | You wind up with a mortgage and car payments and student loans.
00:09:17.200 | And then you reach this kind of hurdle in your career where you recognize that if I can get a business degree or an advanced degree of some kind, then that will improve my marketability.
00:09:28.200 | That will improve my ability to earn more money.
00:09:30.200 | And so you often do what you did.
00:09:33.200 | You went back to school and accumulated the debt.
00:09:36.200 | And then along the way, you kind of have this perspective where you realize, "I'm supposed to be winning.
00:09:44.200 | I'm pretty successful here.
00:09:47.200 | I'm making a good amount of money.
00:09:49.200 | I've got a lot of good things.
00:09:50.200 | But yet it doesn't feel like I'm making a lot of progress."
00:09:53.200 | Is that accurate with your experience?
00:09:55.200 | Yeah.
00:09:56.200 | No, that resonates completely.
00:09:58.200 | Yeah. And then in my experience, I think that Dave Ramsey and his message of being debt-free is so powerful for two reasons.
00:10:07.200 | For me, it was recognizing if I don't have any payments, then I have this whole income here that I can put towards anything that I want to.
00:10:16.200 | And then number two is his focus on the intensity.
00:10:21.200 | And the challenge for me was very appealing because I realized, "Hey, I can do this fast."
00:10:27.200 | Was your experience similar to that?
00:10:29.200 | Yeah. No, I think that intensity piece that is really core to his message and that some of his critics are pretty dismissive of is in many ways the most thing that he has going.
00:10:45.200 | Because he really believes it.
00:10:47.200 | He communicates it so consistently.
00:10:49.200 | And I think that the power of focus is real.
00:10:53.200 | And so, how our brains work and that's been what we've also experienced as a family.
00:10:58.200 | So, when I give advice, because I came through that path of intensity myself and I experienced the benefit of it, I have really appreciated that.
00:11:08.200 | And I can't help but have my own advice colored by that experience.
00:11:12.200 | I love not owing any money and I recognize that if I can be single-mindedly focused on one goal, it can produce powerful results.
00:11:20.200 | Recently on a Q&A show, I was giving advice to a family that had some credit card debt and a car loan and mortgage debt and second mortgage, etc.
00:11:30.200 | And I immediately reverted to change everything and get rid of all this debt.
00:11:35.200 | Because then you can have full control of your money.
00:11:38.200 | Now, today, you've moved into the kind of the fire community.
00:11:43.200 | So, here's my question for you, Matt.
00:11:44.200 | Do you regret following the Dave Ramsey plan?
00:11:48.200 | Wow, that's a great question.
00:11:52.200 | I know enough about the time frame over which I did this and my own investing style, which relates to essentially heavily equity-focused and index funds and low fees.
00:12:05.200 | To know that had I taken an equivalent amount of money that I have used in debt repayment, both in terms of mortgage acceleration, because we've almost got the house clear, and then also this big student loan chunk.
00:12:16.200 | And had I invested that the way I invest, it would have been a financially better outcome in terms of the math.
00:12:26.200 | But then I have to contrast that with the fact that who knows whether I really would have done that with the money.
00:12:35.200 | Getting serious enough to actually clear a quarter million dollars worth of debt is the kind of mindset that then enables you to have the money to build wealth and other investments.
00:12:46.200 | And whether that's through private business or through index funds or through real estate, any of those paths.
00:12:53.200 | I think for me it was worth it, even though I know that the math is wrong.
00:13:00.200 | And that's the basic problem that I've always struggled with, is I have this conflict between behavior and math.
00:13:08.200 | And the math is compelling.
00:13:11.200 | If you chart out the normal historical returns of well-chosen investments in the US stock market and you compare those to the normal prices of many kinds of debt, you find that in general you should invest.
00:13:26.200 | You shouldn't freak out about the debt.
00:13:28.200 | But the problem is you don't see a lot of people who actually ride that train through to its end.
00:13:34.200 | And when I look back, I've always seen in my own life that behavior modification to be more powerful than the math, where I was willing to work a lot more, save a lot more, make a lot more, spend a lot less.
00:13:49.200 | And how do you factor in the fact that you cut your household expenses by $2,000 a month and thus you paid off $25,000 extra?
00:13:58.200 | How do you try to compare that to, "Oh, well, I would work more and I would do that for savings"?
00:14:04.200 | Once you reach a certain point, if you're desperately broke, of course, having a little bit of savings is probably motivating, at least for some of us.
00:14:11.200 | But if you're not desperately broke, it's easy to pull back and say, "I'm doing okay. I don't need to be so focused."
00:14:18.200 | And I think at some point maybe somebody will pull enough data sets together to try to do a study and we'll try to figure out which really works.
00:14:26.200 | But I think there's a lot of benefit in that focus.
00:14:29.200 | Now, here's my next question. Go ahead and comment on it.
00:14:31.200 | Can I respond just a little bit?
00:14:33.200 | Because we're wrestling with this in our own family right now, and I think we really have come to some conclusions that are partially implemented at this point,
00:14:42.200 | which is to say, "I now have sufficient funds that would be available to me to pull from a Roth account with no penalty to clear the whole rest of my mortgage.
00:14:54.200 | And I'm actually preparing to do that. So I've transitioned that stuff out of equities. It's in cash. I haven't actually made the withdrawal from the account yet.
00:15:03.200 | But I'm a financial advisor. I can do the math. I've done the math.
00:15:07.200 | And I've talked to my colleagues about this. I'm like, "Look, I think if I pay this off now, this is going to cost me in today's dollar terms a half million dollars at retirement
00:15:17.200 | versus just leaving it in there and paying it off over time through just amortizing the note."
00:15:24.200 | But I'm like, "I just don't think given where we are in this big career transition that our family's made that I will ever feel better about having no mortgage debt than I do right now."
00:15:35.200 | And so in some ways, if I were a client and on the other side of the table for myself, I would be telling that client, "Look, on the one hand, the math is all wrong.
00:15:47.200 | But if you're making this decision with eyes wide open and for all the right reasons, it might be the right reason for you.
00:15:54.200 | Because maybe not having a mortgage payment feels a lot better than having a half million more in your retirement portfolio when you're 65."
00:16:02.200 | So that's a real example that our family has grappled with and has come down on one side of that issue.
00:16:08.200 | And I think it really matters who you are and what you value. So you're a pretty family-oriented person, right? You have three children, is that right?
00:16:21.200 | We've got three school-age children, yes, sir.
00:16:23.200 | So you have three age children, you're very kind of conservative in your values and your approach, etc. And I think when you factor that in, those things – I also, of course, have that same bent.
00:16:37.200 | And when I look at it, I look at it and say, "What do you define as winning? Is winning having the highest financial portfolio?"
00:16:47.200 | I personally don't consider that to be winning. Now, of course, this is governed by my worldview. One of my verses of the Bible that I keep in mind is, "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
00:16:59.200 | So I'm very suspicious of any idea of gaining the whole world if it costs me my soul. So that's a big deal to me. I don't want to put myself in a position where I face risk.
00:17:08.200 | I've gone through, worked with so many people who their relationships are filled with tension. Their family environment is filled with busyness and tension.
00:17:18.200 | And I look at it and say, "Are they winning because they make more money? Are they winning because they're richer? Or what is it?"
00:17:24.200 | Now, I don't know that the opposite extreme is – I don't know that either end of this extreme spectrum.
00:17:31.200 | Some people say they don't know their family, they don't know their children, they're not involved in their local community. It's all finances, all money, all get-rich-all-the-time.
00:17:41.200 | Some people go the other way and they walk away completely from money. And their idea is, "Well, I might be a deadbeat and not work, not have an income, but as long as I'm with my children all the time, then I'm a winner."
00:17:51.200 | I don't see either of those. I think there's a balancing act. But I don't know how to put that into the spreadsheet.
00:17:57.200 | And so, it's one of those things where figuring out the quality of life, the quality of relationships, it doesn't fit well into the spreadsheet.
00:18:06.200 | And that's why I'm with you in terms of that conservative approach. I see so many benefits from that.
00:18:14.200 | And especially – and that's where I want to get back to your story because from what I understand from what you communicated with me before this interview, you've left your corporate job, which was taking a ton of time, and you're making two transitions.
00:18:30.200 | You're making a transition into a job that gives you more flexibility, which allows you to have more control over your life, which allows you to have more control over your family decisions.
00:18:41.200 | And you're transitioning into a job that is much more suited to your personal interests, which ultimately, in my opinion, would lead to much higher wealth potential.
00:18:50.200 | Because then you go from something where you're stuck in a salary-based scenario to now you have incentive compensation and you have a huge income potential.
00:18:58.200 | I don't think you could do that if you didn't have control on your spending. I don't think you could do that if you had a big, hairy mortgage and you were worried about it all the time.
00:19:06.200 | So, if you take your income from a normal six-figure professional income to a million or a couple million bucks a year as a financial advisor, that quickly wipes out all of the foregone loss that you had as a Roth IRA, right?
00:19:19.200 | Do you see that in your own situation?
00:19:21.200 | For sure. And absolutely. So, our family, in terms of how we structure our lives, we've sort of always led with our values.
00:19:30.200 | When I was coming out of business school, it was like, "Well, are we going to move to New York and do investment banking?" Absolutely not. That's a terrible lifestyle.
00:19:38.200 | Are we even going to do consulting where I'm gone four nights a week? I'm really good at it. I like working on a lot of different projects and synthesizing ideas and doing all these things.
00:19:47.200 | Just not the right fit. So, we went the corporate route and it was great. We moved five times in five years with John Deere Company. Got a lot of wonderful experience with them.
00:19:57.200 | And then had the chance five years ago, we wanted to settle down. So, the value of no longer moving kind of rose to the top and we were choosing between two specific locales and had the chance to come back to Raleigh where we had good friends and a good church.
00:20:11.200 | And so, we did that. Well, so we kind of achieved the geography. The job was a tougher fit.
00:20:18.200 | In this new role, we've maintained the geography, which was the goal, and now have transitioned to a job that, as far as I can tell in my now, say, 17-year full-time career,
00:20:30.200 | that's been just the best fit that I've ever experienced in terms of my ability to help clients to understand their needs, to relate my experiences to what they do.
00:20:41.200 | I was general sales manager for a tractor dealership and I was listening to Michael Kitsis on my commutes.
00:20:47.200 | Well, now I'm a financial advisor and I'm listening to Michael Kitsis on my commutes and I have a lot more ability to leverage that in the current role.
00:20:55.200 | So, I guess it's the kind of thing, just like you said, where, like, yeah, if you want to do it on nights and on weekends, maybe there's a pretty good potential there for the future.
00:21:02.200 | When you sat down and kind of charted out this career transition for yourself, how did you approach that process?
00:21:17.200 | Well, I approached it slowly and the way it ultimately worked out, a good friend and on our previous interview, you asked whether there was any value to going to a school that maybe had a network that you got connected with as a result of going there.
00:21:37.200 | A business school classmate connected me to my current employer and she did that. She said, "I think you guys would enjoy visiting with one another." This was about 18 months ago.
00:21:50.200 | And so, Josh Self, our managing partner and the owner of this company, he's my age, we started running together.
00:21:56.200 | And we ran together from spring of '17 until we still run together. And through that time, just a lot of miles on the trail, we got to know one another and developed some trust and rapport.
00:22:13.200 | If you say you're going to be there at 5 a.m., you got to show up and just enjoyed that time.
00:22:32.200 | And to move forward, this was a huge career decision from my family, but this is also the biggest company decision that his office had ever made. So, it was a big deal to bring me on as well.
00:22:46.200 | So, that was kind of how we thought about that. If you're asking more in terms of how we planned for it as a family, I would just say that I think to do something like this, it's important to give yourself as much financial runway as possible.
00:23:03.200 | Kind of like how we had set up our household overhead and what process we'd been through from a debt reduction standpoint from 2010 to 2014.
00:23:14.200 | And then, whether it's a side hustle or whether it's your wife working or your spouse working or whatever process it is that enables you to have that time to get your feet under you in the new thing.
00:23:26.200 | To your point, to enjoy that flexibility and to also pursue that better fit, you have to be able to survive the transition. So, that's how we've thought about it.
00:23:34.200 | So far, have you taken a pay cut with your transition from your corporate job to the financial advice business?
00:23:40.200 | I have and I don't want to be. I'm so thankful for the opportunity that I have here. And so, I'm nothing but delighted with that. But the ability to live on much less than we were earning in the old thing, which also meant we were saving a bunch of money, is what has enabled us to do this.
00:24:01.200 | Right, right. And I want to point out, one of the challenges of the financial advice business is one of the biggest challenges of the first few years. It is a period of career where you are overworked and underpaid.
00:24:14.200 | And one of your major incentives is to look forward to a later stage of the career when many people would consider you to be underworked and overpaid.
00:24:22.200 | But I think many people who have invested heavily into developing a business or a career, they recognize, hey, it all averages out in the long run. Some people look at a highly paid surgeon and say, "Well, you're overpaid for your work."
00:24:38.200 | That surgeon will reflect back on the 10 years that they spent in school and residency and say, "I was living on nothing for 10 years when you were doing well. This is now finally a little bit of my just rewards."
00:24:52.200 | But back to personal finance, one of the most powerful reasons I know of to be out of debt and to have good control in your finances is to be able to make any kind of job transition.
00:25:03.200 | I can't imagine how stressful it is for many families who are deeply in debt, have very high lifestyles, and then they lose their job or they try to figure out how to make a job transition because they don't have the levers to be able to do it.
00:25:16.200 | They can't go into that career that they've dreamed of, whether it's painting portraits or painting caricatures down at the local fair or writing a novel or becoming a financial advisor.
00:25:26.200 | You have to be able to do it with your money. So either you can figure out a great way to do it on the income side or you can control your expenses enough to give you the freedom and flexibility to make those choices.
00:25:36.200 | And controlling your household expenses and being able to live on less than you make is one of the most powerful ways of making that career transition.
00:25:44.200 | I think your story is a perfect example of that.
00:25:48.200 | Yeah, no, I think so too. And that was definitely when I reached back out and wanted to get in touch with you again about this episode.
00:25:55.200 | That was one of the things that I just wanted to share is we are not, as a family, financially independent in the sense that our investments could fully support our lifestyle.
00:26:04.200 | But we are in a place where our expenses are low enough and our investments are sufficient that we can take what would be to most people a really meaningful pay cut and be just fine through this transition.
00:26:18.200 | And I also want to be clear because my employer is very generous with me and I am so thankful for that aspect as well.
00:26:28.200 | They're going to wind up listening to it. So you got to make sure you put in enough nice things there to mollify your running partner. Otherwise, he'll work you too hard next week.
00:26:36.200 | No, no, no. We're in a pretty good arrangement.
00:26:40.200 | So I just want to go back to what I see in personal finance and you're well schooled in the financial independence, early retirement space. But to me, it is blindingly obvious that the easiest and best way that many people could improve their lives is by getting a good career fit for themselves.
00:26:59.200 | By working in something that for their own reasons is important to them.
00:27:03.200 | I don't see any good examples of anybody who is happy sitting around and doing nothing. Rather, I see that the best path to contentment is to do meaningful work with people that you like for reasons that are important to you.
00:27:19.200 | And if you'll just simply develop that and then do that work in an appropriate ratio for the rest of life, then you set the cornerstone for a lifestyle of contentment.
00:27:32.200 | And so that should be the very first thing that financial planners focus on. It should be standard financial advice that don't invest any money for your future until you have established a career, a career, a good career fit for your future.
00:27:46.200 | That's the best, cheapest way to totally change your life. But in order for you to do that, sometimes you have to go back to school, take more training, take a pay cut, be able to live on nothing or less while you make some kind of transition.
00:27:58.200 | And then once that's done and once that's in place, then you go ahead and bring in all of the other financial tools.
00:28:03.200 | Now, of course, financial advisors were not necessarily competent to be good career advisors in that space.
00:28:08.200 | But for most people, the best thing they could do would be to change their job.
00:28:13.200 | Second best thing to do is change their location. But if they could just change their job and their location, then you can completely transform your life.
00:28:20.200 | And you don't – you need a few thousand dollars, but you don't need millions of dollars to make it happen.
00:28:24.200 | No, absolutely. And I think one of the things too that's struck me as an advisor is as an independent firm, we just try to help our clients with whatever.
00:28:38.200 | When I was interviewing formally here for this position, we had a client who was a widow call in who wanted to discuss an HVAC repair quote that she had received.
00:28:51.200 | It's our goal to help our clients with whatever. We make professional introductions, of course, all the time.
00:28:57.200 | We help people network to change their jobs. So I think it's just – I love the breadth of opportunity that we have to meaningfully serve our clients in this work.
00:29:10.200 | And to your point, yes, being able to make a transition to something that just – I wake up with a smile on my face and go home with a smile on my face at night.
00:29:18.200 | My kids have noticed the difference. We're glad you work at PLC Wealth now. And just to be able to find that fit for you, whatever it is, is such a blessing.
00:29:28.200 | So let's pivot now into the wealth management world. And I warn you, I'm not going to be easy on you because this is a tough –
00:29:37.200 | Remember, I'm new.
00:29:38.200 | Indeed. But I wanted to draw out your story to show how financial – first of all, being debt-free gives you options. High savings rates gives you options. Low expenses give you options.
00:29:52.200 | They allow you to adjust your career at a phase of life at which many people could not adjust their careers. You have children –
00:29:59.200 | And I won't say it's been easy.
00:30:00.200 | Yeah. Oh, of course it's not. It's not easy, but it's more doable. But many people, if they are not in control of their expense – on the expense side of their income and expenses, if they're not in control of that, then they feel trapped.
00:30:15.200 | They can't pivot. They can't adjust their life. So by control of the expenses, which came from getting out of debt and instilled that discipline in you, getting out of debt led to control of expenses.
00:30:25.200 | Control of expenses leads to savings. Savings leads to options. Options to start new businesses, change careers, etc. And then those options can lead to opportunities for more fulfilling and meaningful work, can lead to opportunities for greater wealth building.
00:30:40.200 | There's no doubt in my mind that if you continue to believe that the financial planning career is a good fit for you, there's no doubt in my mind that you will retire far wealthier than you ever would have in the corporate world because now you get into the world of a business, incentive-based compensation, where your income is no longer linear.
00:30:59.200 | Now your income has the opportunity to be exponential, which is the next stage of wealth building. And then those habits follow all the way through. So I see in your example a really important textbook case for us to analyze because you've done it consciously and there have been resources and inputs and sources into your life that have helped you along that transition.
00:31:19.200 | And there are a lot of lessons there for anybody with ears to hear. Anything you want to add on that before we transition to financial planning?
00:31:25.200 | No, I think you've got that pretty well teed up, so appreciate it.
00:31:29.200 | Now, you come from the background of being a personal finance aficionado. Financial advisors have a reputation of, let's just say it's not good. I think congresspeople are less admired than financial advisors, but financial advisors were down there pretty low in the heap.
00:31:50.200 | There's not a lot of trust between many financial advisors and the public. First, what perspectives have you developed over the years in terms of your trust or lack of trust in financial advisors when you have been simply a personal finance consumer?
00:32:07.200 | Yeah. Okay, so I don't know if this is going to answer the exact question that you asked, so you steer me back on track however you want. But one of the things that I am genuinely thankful for in this transition is that I have 17 years of professional work and 39 years of life behind me of people knowing who I am as a person before making this transition.
00:32:28.200 | Because the point that you make about the general regard which the public has for financial advisors I think is true and I think is one of the harder things about being a person of high integrity seeking to be in this business.
00:32:47.200 | So that I think is a challenge to be overcome and it can only be overcome just by how you live your life and how you run your business. And obviously seeking to do both those things as well as I can.
00:33:03.200 | As a former consumer of financial services or still as a consumer of financial services, I have always done what I would encourage any client to do which is to vet the person thoroughly, understand if there's a legitimate fit between you and between the client and the advisor whether you guys are kind of even on the same page.
00:33:30.200 | I do think that on the one hand I do think that how the advisor gets paid matters. I also think that ultimately the advisor has to be a person of integrity and the client has to have the ability to understand that the advisor is a person of integrity in order for the relationship to be successful.
00:33:54.200 | Because there are potential conflicts in every relationship even as I think about someone who I really admire, Dr. Jim Dolley of The White Coat Investor, a super successful blog and podcast.
00:34:07.200 | He's pretty down on a lot of different financial advisor models while he also still has some partnerships with financial advisors. But you could even argue that a blogger or a podcaster who tells his or her audience you don't need professional financial advice has a conflict as well because they are in some sense selling the DIY option to that same consumer.
00:34:32.200 | So I think it's always buyer beware but then you have to get to a point of understanding what you're buying and trusting the person that you're dealing with.
00:34:41.200 | Yeah. Some of the ethical issues in the financial advice space are really really tough and I agree with your analysis in the sense of in general it's been my observation that a person of integrity will usually behave in an upright and appropriate way no matter where they are.
00:35:09.200 | No matter the model that they're in. No matter the compensation model. No matter the practice structure etc. And a person without integrity will find ways to abuse almost any system that they're in.
00:35:22.200 | The problem is I don't know what percentage of people are people of integrity and I don't know how to prove that in advance. It's kind of a mystery. And so I think the incentives do matter. Practice structure matters. There are some things that are better and I think we would all be well served to acknowledge that we're weak and fallible people.
00:35:45.200 | And that's why putting in place structures that hold us accountable is important. And then how to do that in the financial advice space is tough. So it sounds like your primary input was your running partner and so you probably moved fairly directly in with this firm.
00:36:07.200 | Did you interview with other firms? Did you get a sense of the overall industry before you joined PLC or whatever your firm is called?
00:36:14.200 | Yeah. So PLC Wealth Management is our firm and I did. I interviewed with a traditional insurance firm and in fact was offered a job there. So I was offered a job there to run an investment portfolio for a large group there.
00:36:32.200 | My goal was to be client facing so that wasn't a good fit. I interviewed with another firm that was a very similar practice structure to our own. I just didn't have the level of relationship with that owner that I do here at PLC Wealth. And so I guess I would say I genuinely interviewed with three firms before landing in this current situation.
00:36:56.200 | So your current structure, you are working in a fee only registered investment advisory firm. Is that accurate?
00:37:02.200 | That's right. We are a fee only registered investment advisory firm. Man, sorry Joshua. I hope you'll be feeling well. So we sit on the same side of the table as our clients in that regard.
00:37:17.200 | We have three advisors here. So I'm obviously the new guy. I'm in the midst of my CFP curriculum now. Josh Self, who's our managing partner, is also a CFP and has been doing this for his entire career.
00:37:31.200 | And then Mike Perkins is a CPA and is the other advisor here. So we have, I think we would say, we feel like between an MBA, a CFP and a CPA, we have some really highly qualified and educated folks working at PLC Wealth.
00:37:48.200 | When you chose the fee only route, so fee only is a big, is a big, it's an increasingly big deal in the world of financial advice. And the idea, of course, of fee only is because you don't take commissions from companies that are paying you to place their products.
00:38:06.200 | The idea is you will be less biased. You'll be more focused exclusively on the client's interests. And in fact, as a fee only fiduciary, that is also your legal obligation.
00:38:19.200 | That's correct.
00:38:20.200 | Did you believe, being a personal finance consumer, did you believe that you had to be a fee only financial advisor in order to be ethical and live in integrity? Or did you believe that it was optional?
00:38:32.200 | No, I did not believe that it was required in order to be ethical and in your words, live in integrity. I do think that it is probably, let's see, between the Department of Labor rule that was written and talked about so much in the waning years of the Obama administration, it probably is a helpful communication tool.
00:38:58.200 | And of course, it was fascinating to me to see the wire houses adopt this as part of their communication strategy that they were now also going to be fee based. And so, I think it, excuse me, I think it has some benefits from a communication standpoint.
00:39:14.200 | But I guess I do like being able to tell clients legally, you know, it's my job to act in your best interest. I'm not free to act in any other way.
00:39:27.200 | So, now let's talk about costs. You mentioned earlier that you had some bias. For example, it sounded like you had some bias in favor of passive investing as compared to active investing. Was that true and did you have any other biases before thinking about becoming a financial advisor?
00:39:43.200 | Yeah, actually, I think that is a really good point. Whatever the practice model, I would have needed to be working with clients from an investment standpoint in something that was like passive investing.
00:39:59.200 | I mean, I know you have some industry followers out there. We're a DFA shop. I do believe in what DFA is doing, although value investing has struggled for the last 10 years as growth has really performed super well.
00:40:13.200 | But I genuinely believe in that philosophy. I would not have been able to go to work in a firm that was promoting relatively high cost, actively managed products because my finance training and my own experience just leads me to believe that that's not the right way to invest.
00:40:32.200 | And so, I would not have been able to, even if the products were good as such things go, to tell clients, "This is really what I think you should do."
00:40:42.200 | So, I do think it's important that advisors eat their own cooking and our family's assets are invested the exact same way that we are counseling our clients to invest their assets.
00:40:52.200 | Okay, so that was one definite bias that I had going into this. I think also, to your point, you want to work with the people that you want to work with, and I just couldn't have a higher opinion of my colleagues or of our practice structure.
00:41:06.200 | So, let me just translate what DFA means into plain English. So, DFA is an acronym for a fund company called Dimensional Fund Advisors. And in essence, my summary of what they do is they're a mutual fund company, but they exclusively sell their mutual funds through advisors.
00:41:23.200 | So, unlike a major competitor such as Vanguard, where you can go onto Vanguard's website, you can open an account, and you can never ever talk to an individual. You just talk with a computer.
00:41:31.200 | DFA only works through advisors. So, if you want to purchase a DFA mutual fund, you have to do it through an advisor.
00:41:40.200 | Now, because of that, they have some other practices with their management style in their funds.
00:41:48.200 | And it's exclusively passive investing, but they add a couple of tweaks, and it's the DFA argument that this is good because we're harvesting all the benefits of passive investing, the low cost as compared to active investing.
00:42:00.200 | We're managing the market. We're getting the market returns, but we're also getting some additional benefits such as stability of funds.
00:42:07.200 | Because all of our funds come through our advisors, we are able to make sure that funds stay invested, which allows us to pick up some gains at the margin when others are selling, when Vanguard has to sell because people are freaking out because they don't understand that the stock market's going to drop by 400 points or whatever.
00:42:23.200 | We can keep continuity, and then we'll try to balance and harvest some other benefits here and there to give a little bit more value in exchange for some fees that we're charging.
00:42:35.200 | How did I do, Matt? Was that a fair assessment?
00:42:37.200 | Yeah, I think that was a fair assessment. I guess what I would say is that I know you and I could geek out and talk about mutual funds, and I don't think that's the right way to take the interview.
00:42:48.200 | But the DFA is focused on buying value companies, which are companies that are sort of out of favor in the sense that their earnings – they're priced low on a share base relative to their earnings.
00:43:04.200 | That's kind of the cornerstone. They have a whole bunch of academics and research kind of on their side in this regard.
00:43:12.200 | And they're also, as you said, focused on keeping the money invested, and they believe that clients working through advisors are the best way to do that.
00:43:22.200 | So we also sort of enjoy working with the DFA team. They're always very ready kind of with the evidence to back up their investing approach, and we think it's valuable for our clients.
00:43:37.200 | So when you think about value proposition as an advisor, especially as a new one trying to figure out how do I go into this business and what do I do, how do you position that for people?
00:43:47.200 | When you're talking to somebody who's skeptical and says, "Hey, listen," like I was before I became an advisor, "I can do better on my own. I don't need you." How do you position the value of a financial advisor at this point?
00:43:58.200 | Yeah, well, this is a fascinating question. Obviously, I have to be able to answer this one with integrity or I never could have gotten into this business.
00:44:06.200 | I was clearly a hardcore DIYer three times from the time I was 18 to 36, whatever. I paid advisors fees to sort of talk with my wife and I about what we were doing from a planning standpoint, make sure we weren't missing anything big.
00:44:23.200 | But no way was I going to kind of in any sense turn over control to an advisor. So I was coming at this from a hardcore DIY standpoint.
00:44:32.200 | I think also as you sort of reflect out on the personal finance blogosphere and podcasts and industry conferences, there is a subset of the population. I don't know what fraction it is.
00:44:45.200 | Bogleheads forums, if it's 5% of investors or 10% of investors or 15% of investors, this really is their hobby. Some people golf, other people do personal finance.
00:44:55.200 | It's a minority. And so what I've come to realize is that there's a group of people who really are doing it themselves and they're probably just fine to keep doing it themselves.
00:45:06.200 | And maybe every now and then, they kind of have a checkup and make sure there's nothing big that they're missing.
00:45:12.200 | There's another group of people that thinks they want to do it themselves, consumes books and podcasts and blogs, and in fact, then never implements.
00:45:22.200 | And that's something that I do see kind of with one foot in the online personal finance world and one foot in the advisor world.
00:45:31.200 | There are people who want to do something but really aren't sort of able to bring all the pieces together to make it happen.
00:45:39.200 | And that's a value that an advisor does have is that it will in fact happen if you're working together.
00:45:46.200 | And then there's an even bigger portion of the population. I don't know what fraction it is, but it's the majority that honestly just has something they would rather do than think about personal finance.
00:45:57.200 | And for those clients, although our fees are super transparent, whether it's in our form ADV or in our statements that we send to our clients, it's all right there. You see it.
00:46:12.200 | They're getting a valuable benefit because they're just not that into it. And having somebody good in their corner makes a world of difference in terms of where they end out versus what might have been the case otherwise.
00:46:29.200 | So I see those three groups all sort of are in my mind as I think about that question.
00:46:36.200 | I think I would add also that there needs to be some kind of spectrum of simplicity versus complexity.
00:46:45.200 | There are many people in that group of DIYers. There are many people in that group of people who can effectively manage their affairs themselves.
00:46:58.200 | And their affairs are simple enough that there's little danger of them facing something else. I would add some markers here. For example, if you're an employee versus an entrepreneur, if you have access to good programs with your employment, generally there's going to be very few things that you need to do outside of that work if you're a mainstream investor.
00:47:21.200 | But if you all of a sudden start to add in other things, you start to add in unique risk profiles, you're an entrepreneur instead of an employee, or you're a very high-ranking employee, or you're a very highly compensated employee, or you have significant assets, or your affairs face some degree of uncertainty, you face extra legal liability, or you face additional people in your family.
00:47:45.200 | Any degree of complexity can quickly take somebody out from their knowledge base. And very few people are going to seek to acquire the breadth of knowledge that a good financial advisor has for their own affairs unless they're very dedicated. And I agree. I do think they exist. But I think a massive percentage of the people who think they're in that situation, often they just don't know what they don't know. Just like all of us. None of us don't know what we don't know.
00:48:14.200 | Yeah, no, I agree completely. I'll just give a concrete example. You know what? When I talk to prospects from time to time or talk to clients who maybe have access to a health savings account through their employer, I have yet to meet the first one that understood that health savings account contributions made from payroll are not only deductible against income, but also avoid employment taxes of Social Security and Medicare.
00:48:42.200 | And so it's like, for example, people think, "Well, this is just another tax-deferred bucket. And I know I'm saving for retirement, but I don't really know that I'm saving for medical expenses because I'm healthy."
00:48:56.200 | Well, for example, as has been – you can find plenty of articles about this, but health savings account is actually – other than any employer match you might be getting, health savings account is the bucket you should fill first. It's the most advantageous money. But most people simply aren't familiar with that. So that's a simple example of not knowing what you don't know.
00:49:17.200 | Right, right. And then even – there are many, many aspects beyond that. How do you see the interface between investment advisory work and financial planning?
00:49:29.200 | Yeah. Okay. So we are clearly a planning-focused firm while also wholeheartedly embracing the fact that investments are how most people are going to achieve the goals of their plan.
00:49:43.200 | So our portfolios are geared to looking at clients' risk profiles. But essentially, we are going to work with clients on establishing what the appropriate portfolio is going to be.
00:49:57.200 | And then we're going to invest their dollars in that portfolio, and we are going to rebalance, and we're perhaps going to try to – excuse me – to educate the client over time about whether what they think their risk profile is is really appropriate for where they are in life, whether that's too much volatility or too little volatility in their portfolio.
00:50:19.200 | But that's how we're going to start. But the real value add that we feel we bring is in systematically working with clients through the financial planning process. So that's where I think we would – that's definitely where we would focus while sort of seeing investments as the kind of the rocket fuel that gets it all done.
00:50:40.200 | If I were to go back into the world of working with individuals, I would position it much like that. And I would just say that good financial planning is what allows you to stay invested well. And without good financial planning, you can't stay effectively invested well.
00:50:56.200 | Whether that good financial planning simply involves not having to cash out assets at inopportune times, whether that good financial planning involves being well-employed, whether that financial planning involves figuring out what layers of asset protection to put on top of the portfolio so that a judgment doesn't take the portfolio away from you, etc., etc., etc., they have to go together.
00:51:17.200 | And unfortunately, so many people think that all advisors do is just deal with investments when, in my opinion, there's – the planning is where the real juice is that feeds the investments.
00:51:28.200 | So, Matt, here's my question for you. It's my contention that financial – well, let me figure out how to ask it in a reasonable way. One of the things I always struggled with is I have never found any way for financial advisors to work effectively with people who are broke. Financial advisors really need to work with people who are already wealthy. Has that been your experience?
00:51:55.200 | Yeah. I would agree with that, although I would want to quickly caveat that to say that, one, it is our philosophy and commitment as a firm that if someone needs help, we're going to help them. On the other hand, of course, we have to be able to exist as a business.
00:52:16.200 | So, then we seek to find different ways to do that. So, we have both sort of – we have singular consulting engagements. We have comprehensive planning without investment management. And then, like most firms in our RA channel, asset management and traditional planning for clients who already have significant assets is clearly the bread and butter.
00:52:42.200 | So, I'm not – and I'm certainly trying to ask you a provocative question because one of my goals personally is I want to affect the financial advice community and I want us to help us do a better job of speaking honestly to people. And one of those things is simply you need to have put together enough money to afford good advice.
00:53:01.200 | If you're going to pay a couple thousand bucks for a financial planning engagement, even if it's of limited scope, that means that you're going to have to have your affairs in order enough to come up with the money out without missing your rent payment this month, which is just basically means you got to go from being broke to not being broke to do that.
00:53:19.200 | You don't have to have millions of dollars, but you have to at least have enough money to pay a professional for their perspective. And I think that if we focus on helping people to do that and helping people to see the value of that, then we could help more people to cross over.
00:53:37.200 | So, I want to close with two questions here. Question number one, if you were giving advice to somebody who's currently broke, whether that's – to whatever varieties. Now, having gone through this pathway of seeing the personal finance side, Dave Ramsey, financial independence movement, now today being a professional financial advisor, what advice would you give to somebody who can't afford your fees at this point?
00:54:03.200 | Yeah, I think if you want a vast array of content, the Internet is full of it. And there's some places that are probably better to look than others. Radical personal finance, especially in your early episodes, is very focused on some of that stuff because I know you had that vision of helping folks who don't have a lot of money.
00:54:26.200 | So, if you want the real simple answer, checking out Dave Ramsey's total money makeover book from the library and actually doing what he says rather than just reading it, that's free. Or if you want to go ahead and use your highlighter, you can get a copy for $15. And I probably recommend that approach. We do not currently have any planning options that approach the $15 fee.
00:54:48.200 | But on the other hand, we want to help people. But I think if you'll sort of walk with Dave Ramsey for a little bit, you'll probably find your way to needing some more advanced help, whether that's on an a la carte part of your family's financial plan or whether that's an overall planning engagement.
00:55:15.200 | So, that would be my thought. I do not know of a better resource for someone who is struggling with cash flow management and the basics of wealth building than the total money makeover book. I just don't.
00:55:30.200 | I agree. When I was a financial advisor, from time to time, Ramsey would put those books on sale at $10 a pop and he would sell them by the carton of $10. And whenever he would do that, I would buy a carton of them. And I usually kept a box of them in my trunk. And when I would constantly be meeting with people who were broke, I would just say, "Listen, here, I'll give you a book. I can give away plenty of $10 books without it hurting me."
00:55:53.200 | Because here's the problem. The concept of investing is fairly opaque for most people. Passive investing, active investing, that's opaque. But paying your credit cards off, that's not opaque. It's the nuts and bolts of finance. Figuring out how to make sure you spend less than you make and then you use that difference intelligently.
00:56:15.200 | And paying off your credit cards is going to be a really intelligent use of the money. But that's what you have to do in order to become a person of basic competence when it comes to finances. Because when you sit down with a financial advisor and the financial advisor says, "Let's talk about your retirement plan," you have to feed that financial advisor some kind of accurate data about your expenses. You have to understand what your projected expenses will be.
00:56:40.200 | This is why most retirement planning is worthless for people who don't know what their actual expenses are. So your Dave Ramsey budget will prepare you not only to get out of debt, but it'll prepare you to have a productive and useful meeting with a financial advisor.
00:56:56.200 | Because the difference between spending $3,200 a month and $4,500 a month is a very large number in terms of your overall investment portfolio. And so you have to get yourself to basic competence in managing your financial affairs. And that includes having some savings. That includes paying off your debts and paying your bills on time. That includes having some insurance coverages.
00:57:20.200 | And then once you're in that situation, then you can move on to the additional steps. So I agree with you. I think you have to – in some ways, I try to speak a little harshly sometimes to try to be grating a little bit to some listeners to say, "Get it together." But you got to get it together before you can go on to advanced concepts. And it's just down to simple behavior.
00:57:44.200 | So here's my last question, Matt, and I'll let you give – after you answer this, then I'll – of course, being a long-time listener, I want to give you a chance to promote your firm because I'm sure there are many listeners who would appreciate talking to someone like you. But you've come – you're part of the FIRE community. You've come through that. You've been affected by that.
00:58:02.200 | The general financial planning community largely doesn't understand the FIRE mindset. What's your perspective as a new financial advisor? What's your perspective on FIRE and the financial planning community?
00:58:18.200 | Yeah, never the twain shall meet. No, I'm teasing about that. I was so fascinated – and this is a little off-topic, but did you listen to Suzy Orman's recent rant on Paula Pants' Afford Anything podcast?
00:58:32.200 | I listened to the 60-second excerpt from it. I didn't listen to the full podcast.
00:58:37.200 | Okay. Well, that was probably enough. But what's fascinating, right? So I'm a marketer.
00:58:41.200 | Go ahead and talk about what it is. Explain it, though, for me and listeners who didn't hear it.
00:58:46.200 | I'm sorry. Yeah. So Suzy Orman, well-known personal finance name, maybe second to Dave Ramsey in that world. I don't know.
00:58:55.200 | Came on to Paula Pants' podcast and basically castigated the FIRE movement as short-sighted.
00:59:03.200 | On the one hand, she was super clear – and this, I thought, was value-add – to say, "You don't know what you don't know. You don't know how your life may change. You don't know how things may be worse for you in the future.
00:59:16.200 | So if you willingly reduce your earning capacity at an early age, that really may have long-term consequences that aren't good."
00:59:28.200 | Okay. Fair enough. That was a fine point, and that was good. But the point that she then went on to make was basically to criticize the math of the FIRE movement,
00:59:41.200 | that there is a point at which your investments can adequately support your lifestyle.
00:59:48.200 | And when you have come to that tipping point, then paid work becomes optional. And she was dismissive of that.
00:59:58.200 | And what fascinated me the most about this interaction is Suzy Orman didn't get where she was by being dumb. She's a super smart lady.
01:00:06.200 | What really intrigued me was that this very high-profile, you might say, mainstream personal finance personality was trolling the FIRE movement in order to sort of gain publicity and engagement from an audience about her sort of return to active work.
01:00:27.200 | And what that kind of signaled to me was in many ways sort of a coming of age of the FIRE movement overall.
01:00:35.200 | I mean, if you have someone like Suzy Orman wanting to interact that way in order to draw attention – she wants attention from the FIRE movement on Suzy Orman like it wasn't an accident.
01:00:49.200 | Then that speaks a lot about kind of the maturity of this group.
01:00:56.200 | Okay, so back to the FIRE movement and financial advisors. One of the things obviously that has come out in your show over time – I think it's come through both call-in questions as well as emails – are folks from the FIRE community who want to work with an advisor but have difficulty finding one that even understands what this is.
01:01:15.200 | I would say that I'm a huge fan of the FIRE approach not because it lets you go sit in a hammock but because it gives you the flexibility to maybe do the things that you really dream of doing.
01:01:29.200 | And I think that working with an advisor who understands that that's the point of FIRE is a valuable idea.
01:01:39.200 | So that would be one thing that I would say about that.
01:01:42.200 | And I would say for your own benefit, I will be interested – since you come from the FIRE movement or at least exposure to it – I'm interested to see if, you know, find out a year from now whether or not you have clients in this space.
01:01:57.200 | Because to the credit of many people who are involved in financial independence at an early age, they're very much DIYers. I would guess that the DIY percentage of people who are actively involved in FIRE versus not is multiple times higher than the average population.
01:02:14.200 | So it's a very hands-on approach, which is great. That brings challenges of do I really need an advisor?
01:02:21.200 | But I do think that there are a lot of people who really would benefit from talking with an advisor who actually understands the reality of both the technical CFP type of work, who understands the reality of details on financial distribution strategies.
01:02:40.200 | Okay, yeah, you've got 25 times annual expenses, but now what do I do? Where do I take the money from? How do I work out the sequence of returns? What do I actually do to make this happen?
01:02:53.200 | I think there's a huge benefit from there.
01:02:57.200 | In defense of the mainstream financial planning community, I would say – here's my best metaphor for it.
01:03:04.200 | If you were to go to your local family physician and ask them about the relative merits of turmeric as a health supplement, there's a pretty decent chance that they would say something like, "Okay, I read about turmeric," or that's the stuff that's in Indian food, right?
01:03:24.200 | But they're not going to be all that up-to-date on the details of turmeric. It's just because what they're dealing with is trying to get people to stop drinking a pack of soda a day.
01:03:34.200 | And for financial advisors, that's basically how it is. You get a little jaded because the vast majority of the people that you interact with aren't going to say, "How do I live on $3,000 a month?"
01:03:46.200 | They're saying, "How do I become a multimillionaire and spend millions in retirement?" You have to say, "Well, you've got to figure out a plan to do that."
01:03:54.200 | Or you're dealing with people who are just chronically spending all the money that they make.
01:03:58.200 | I don't have this data memorized anymore, but almost nobody has all that much money.
01:04:04.200 | So there's a place and time at which you go to a specialist, somebody who actually loves it, and that's the person you ask about turmeric.
01:04:14.200 | And perhaps that's a pretty bad metaphor, but that's how it is in financial advice with FIRE.
01:04:18.200 | When you're in the FIRE community, it feels like a big community, but maybe it is having mainstream approach, but there's still not that many people in the general population who are involved in it.
01:04:32.200 | I agree. I think it's a small minority that has sort of – but it's a lot bigger than it was three years ago.
01:04:46.200 | I'm glad to see it. I love to promote it because what I see is it leads to choices and freedom, which is one of the major things that I want to do.
01:04:54.200 | I've wrestled with even if I consider myself part of the FIRE community. Of course, how do you define a community? It's hard.
01:05:00.200 | I prepared a whole series of shows, Matt, one time, outlines for about six shows on reasons I'm not part of the FIRE community, and I just decided to cancel it all.
01:05:09.200 | Maybe at some point I'll do the series. But I love to see the growth because it's accessible and it's doable.
01:05:16.200 | The biggest problem with a lot of the world of financial planning is it's not stuff that people can do.
01:05:21.200 | When you talk about saving money, living on less than you make, living on way less than you make, that's actionable advice that people can put into practice.
01:05:28.200 | Give us a moment. I want to give you – obviously, we've had a chance to meet at FinCon. I've enjoyed getting to know you, which is why I brought you back on the show.
01:05:36.200 | Your story, I think, is a great example. I want to give you an opportunity to share with my audience anything more that we missed, anything you'd like to share, and then a sales pitch for your services.
01:05:47.200 | I'd love to help you get started in your new career.
01:05:49.200 | Well, thanks so much. I mean, that's a huge opportunity. So our firm is PLC Wealth Management. We're an independent firm here in Raleigh, North Carolina.
01:06:00.200 | I guess you probably have gotten that from listening this far. We are happy to work both face-to-face and virtually, so we have clients in many states.
01:06:08.200 | My employer and I both love the Mountain West, and so we joke that we want to have enough clients in the Mountain States to open PLC West.
01:06:17.200 | But I guess I just share that to say that we like to work with clients wherever they are and however they want to work.
01:06:25.200 | What I think we're really good at is helping clients understand their values and then their financial goals as they relate to their values,
01:06:36.200 | and then what actions we're going to take today so that at a future time, whether that's focused on retirement or a career transition or funding kids college or whatever goal you may have,
01:06:45.200 | that you've got the money ready to pay for it. You have the very best chance of having that outcome that you want. So that's how we work.
01:06:54.200 | I still write a little bit at designindependence.com. It's just kind of more of a creative outlet.
01:06:59.200 | But if for some reason your listeners are interested in more kind of story content that we've touched on throughout this interview, it's definitely out there.
01:07:08.200 | But yeah, PLC Wealth Management, our website is PLCwealth.com and our full contact details are available there. If you call, you will find me on the phone.
01:07:17.200 | Awesome. PLCwealth.com and Design Independence. Matt, keep in touch in the coming years and I want to continue to hear about this,
01:07:25.200 | especially from a financial design, financial independence perspective, because I believe that the path that you're on is a perfect example of how to build a rich and meaningful life now
01:07:37.200 | and also work towards a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. So thank you for providing us with a case study.
01:07:43.200 | Absolutely. And that's why I called you. So thanks for the opportunity to visit, Joshua.
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01:08:18.760 | (muffled music)